The moment Edward decided to return to Carlilse
by Ellis Sharpe
Summary: What exactly turned Edward back to Carlilse and Esme? This is a bit of fiction that could have been his deciding moment. Be kind it's my first attempt in years.


Twilight

"… _I thought I would be exempt from the . . . depression . . . that accompanies a conscience. Because I knew the thoughts of my prey, I could pass over the innocent and pursue only the evil. If I followed a murderer down a dark alley where he stalked a young girl, if I saved her, then surely I wasn't so terrible."_

Millie, running for her life, could hear the pace of feet behind her and the pumping breath. She knew that soon they'd be upon her and death not far behind. With what hope she had left she cried for death to come quickly but all that came from her throat what a whispery "Jsuss". Then the first one had leapt onto her back and they tumbled to the concrete. He rolled her to the left between two of the brown brick buildings while the other checked the deserted street then sauntered into the ally.

"Hold her, Pete" he growled. The one named Pete folded his arms around her chest, pinning her arms while trying to stand. Millie struggled helplessly then crack, the other one had slapped her across her cheek. For the moment she stopped. Her lungs burned for air. Her knees and elbows screamed from the scrape across the sidewalk, she could feel her last pair of stockings unravel. She didn't want to look at the second assailant. Bad enough she could picture the man holding her. She wasn't ready to believe he had betrayed her. She could feel his breath on her neck as he managed to drag her further back and lean against the wall.

She watched the other man, a shadow in the dark, walk towards them, lean, tall, handsome with cold, ice chip eyes. He passed through the spray of light from a window then back into darkness. His expression showed no mercy. There was no compassion in set of his shoulders but there was pleasure in the curl of his lips. Millie angled to kick him in the knee and he punched her in the stomach. Pete recoiled with a muffled "oof" then repositioned his hands to bend her arms behind her back until her bones popped in protest. "Make it quick, Stan", a note of entreaty in his reedy voice, "Give me that much."

"Shut up". Stan spat, then with an admonishing voice added, "Camilla, my dear, you have misbehaved. Now I must punish you and, now you must suffer." In his hand was a switchblade. Death wasn't coming soon enough. The shadow named Stan waved the thin blade in front of her eyes, letting the scant light glitter off it. Millie couldn't help but moan. This made him snicker. He laid the length of the blade below her jaw and scrapped it down her neck. "No need to make that mug any uglier, huh, Pete?" he laughed, "She's as ugly as you."

Stan stared into Millie's eyes. Her state of mind had gone from fear to resignation. Stan pressed the point above her elbow below Pete's clamped fingers. She didn't need to look to see if she had been cut as she could feel a warm liquid trickle to her elbow then drip to the ground. She wasn't certain but there seemed to be a gleam from his teeth. She wanted to scream but she hadn't caught her breath yet. To her shame she whimpered.

"Ya gonna to be an example to the rest. I'm gonna carve my initials in ya," he crooned as he slowly pulled the blade back. As tightly as Pete held her, Millie's strength was returning with the sharp pains she felt on her cheek and neck and arm. She wanted to tell Stan to go to hell or finish her off quickly. What was one homely woman to him? That kind of courage failed her in these last minutes.

"Stay still", he warned, "Just a matching letter on your left arm." His eyes gleamed as the blade flicked another "S" in her left arm.

"Pete, God help you, Pete why?" Millie groaned as she laid her head beside his. "I loved you."

"I'm sorry, so sorry Mil. What can I do? I can't help. Sorry, Mil, sorry," his voice was low beside her ear.

"He's outgrowed ya," Stan laughed, "Ya stupid hick."

"Just finish it, please, Stan. I can't take ungh . . ." Stan had punched him in the nose and Pete's head connected with the bricks. Millie struggled again and the slickness of her upper arms made Pete lose his grip. She twisted her torso as somebody grabbed her hair. She tried to cry out as she fell to the ground. Pete landed heavily on her then seemed to float off. The pain in her knees shot up her legs and down through her toes. She collapsed and waited to be pulled up again.

However, as Millie lay crumpled on the filthy ally ground she realized that her assailants were scuffling and cussing but leaving her untouched. Had Pete decided to save her? She raised herself up by her arms to see even though she felt the double sting of her matching wounds. It didn't make sense. Pete's curly head lay by her hips with the rest of his barrel body sprawled awkwardly and inert. Stan was an undulating shadow emitting guttural sounds and flashes of white. His teeth? His shadow began to part in two. The bottom half separated and collapsed to the ground while the rest shifted into a standing position. As he stood his face became illuminated by the same, lighted window. His pale face was topped with dark wavy hair. He wasn't Stan. Stan was the other inert shadow on the ground.

Death had come but not for her, yet.

Millie began to stand. She rose slowly, regarding the pale face as he observed her. His eyes glowed red. As he held her gaze, she continued to rise. "Beautiful Angel of Death," she thought. "Don't leave me behind".

He hadn't moved but continued to stare. Millie took a shuffling step toward him, then another. As she stepped closer she began to stand tall. Lifting her face to expose her neck she continued, her eyes not leaving his.

"Stop" he commanded.

"Please still be thirsty," she breathed, continuing to walk toward him.

"Stop, woman. You are safe from them . . . and I am sated." He added.

Millie took another step and turned so her neck was just below his face and closed her eyes tight. "Without them I'm nothing. You've saved me from nothing."

In the next silent moments she could feel each beat of her heart against her ribs and her huffing breath. She opened her eyes and they fell into the lock of his gaze. "Have mercy on me. Take me too."

The shadow's voice broke, almost as if he were in grief. "You are with child, woman. I will not take an innocent nor shall you offer it."

She snapped her head around to face him, backing away. "How could you know that? I'm not certain myself."

"I hear the thrum of the child's heart."

Millie could feel tears welling and her next breath was a gasping sob. When she approached Pete to tell him of her suspicion, he had glowed. He had promised to "take her away from this". She was to tell nobody. Just that afternoon before she left for work, Pete dropped their carpetbag with their meager belongings into the alleyway. He said to leave work three hours early and meet two blocks down from the library so they could go by rail tonight and return to their hometown. Surely things had calmed down and they could return. They'd find a justice and they'd become husband and wife. It was as close to a proposal as she'd get. That plan was as dead as the men in the alley. "I can't even go back to our room much less Harlan," she reflected, "What'll I do?"

"You've saved us from nothing."

The shadow man turned from her then abruptly loomed over her. Millie cowered.  
"Here," he proffered what looked like a bulky envelope. She reached out and he dropped it on her palm. "Stay here a moment," he added then he vanished.

She stared at her hand. Two train tickets to Kentucky lay below probably $100 dollars. Under that was a money clip with a brass S medallion that she recognized as Stan's. There was much more money in the clip.

The shadow man returned with a worn carpetbag in one hand and a wool coat in the other. "Put this on," he handed it to her, "You will clean up at the depot."

Millie shrugged into the coat feeling the cuts on her arms open a bit but realized that the coat would hide any blood. It smelled of tobacco and whiskey. "Come" he said, beckoning to her. Numbly she followed, not glancing back at the two men who had ruled her life since she left that depressing mining town she had once called home.

Two mornings later Millie woke in the sleeper compartment of a train heading toward San Francisco. After tending her wounds, changing clothes and washing up in the ladies lavatory at the Atlanta depot, she boarded the train on the original tickets with the shadow man. They walked off that train and into an automobile that he drove the next full day to Saint Louis. There they boarded the current train.

During the mostly silent car ride and the train trip, Millie had the time to reflect.

Being the fifth live child of ten, Millie knew what kind of life waited for her by staying in a coal mining town. She would marry and her husband would go into the mines while she popped out babies destine to repeat the cycle. He'd die quickly in a cave in or blast or slowly, like her daddy, of black lung. She'd wear away the rest of her existence raising the last half of their brood by herself, with little to no money. It's probably why her brother, Charlie, and Pete, his best friend turned to the moonshine business. It was fast money and one didn't die slow of it. Millie could appreciate the freedom of their chosen occupation and she reveled in the attention from Pete and her brother. Charlie and he took turns taking her to the picture shows then leaving her in the darkened theater to make a run. What a lovely escape those picture shows represented. She didn't feel any danger. She believed she was helping them avoid attention from the competition.

One evening, Charlie didn't return for her. Instead, Pete fetched her. He'd flung his arm around her shoulder trying to look casual. He didn't speak but looked at her with entreating eyes. He walked her home then pulled a knapsack from under her porch and walked through the back garden and into the woods. The next morning, while walking to Sunday Service, Mama first gave her a significant look then told the children that Charlie had gone to work in the city. Mille blanched; her stomach felt twisted. She hung back, encouraging her younger siblings to keep up. As soon as they had turned a corner in the dirt road she raced back home. Pete was at the edge of the woods with the knapsack on his back. When she had approached within ten feet of him he put up his hand in the "stop" position. "Get a sack and take only what you can carry", he said.

From her mother's closet shelf she took the old carpetbag and a pair of hose then she went to her room. Already in her Sunday best and only pair of shoes, she grabbed her nightgown, two dresses, some overalls, and all her under-things. She took a poetry book with the stubs of all of her theater tickets pressed between the pages. She hoped that the picture of her parents with their first child was in there but she didn't have the time to check. From the hall dresser, she took a small comb, leaving the bigger one that matched the brush. She grabbed a clean cloth towel and wrapped half a loaf of cornbread in it. She felt bad about taking food but there were two less mouths to feed, she reckoned. She spied a ripped quilt Mama had on her mending pile so she grabbed that and stuffed it in. In a last run through the kitchen she picked up her cup then spied Charlie's and took that one instead. More than this, she couldn't take from Mama.

She could feel the ripples up her scalp; her internal warning. Millie stifled a yelp when Pete's face appeared in the kitchen side window. "Out the back!" he mouthed. She opened the back window and handed him the carpet bag then stepped out herself. Closing the window, she took her bag back. It wasn't heavy yet. They walked up the middle of the garden between the tomatoes and string beans. Heads down and quickening their pace they were beneath the wood's shade before they heard the rap on the front door. The both broke to a run through knee-high brush. The idea of her kind ever leaving Holden, Kentucky was unheard of. Along with the meager education and heavy dose of Old Testament, family was salvation; all else was damnation. She didn't look behind at her only home. It hadn't been safe, really, since Daddy died.

Millie would ache for her mother and siblings but she couldn't regret leaving that gaunt life. She resigned herself to Pete's quest to reach Atlanta. Pete may not have been the brightest. He was missing a few teeth and his flattened nose had been broken more than once. His hair was carrot color and would have been tight ringlets if he let it grow. He kept it shorn and wore a dirty painter's cap because his hair line was already receding. But his heart was good and he was gentle with her.

She only asked him once, that first night they spent on the run, were they going to meet her brother Charlie in Atlanta. They had already gotten water with her cup from a creek and eaten the bread. Sitting on the carpetbag leaning against a tree they huddled under the tattered quilt. Pete had been silent for so long, she figured that was the only answer she'd receive. Then he shuddered, and great sobs burst from his chest as he buried his face into her shoulder. "I'm sorry, so sorry Mil. What could I do? I couldn't help. It's my fault. Sorry, sorry Mil." They didn't speak of Charlie again.

In hindsight, a couple of bumpkins from the hills were easy marks for the likes of Stanos Zenodopolis. He was immediately drawn to Pete's brute strength. Millie would be expendable once he had weaned Pete from her. They were no longer on the fringes of whiskey running; they were deep into the hell of the waning days of Prohibition. Stan put Millie in the midtown library working nights and Pete became his body guard and enforcer. The only times they were together were early morning when he came into their room until the afternoon when she was escorted to the branch. Stan never let them out of their room together.

That room was their sanctuary, of sorts. Although one drunken night Pete held her down, covering her mouth and took her. Then he sobbed into her shoulder as she held him tight and droned hymns and folksongs until he slept. Despite his size and strength, Pete was gentle with Millie after that night. Leaving home was surely their damnation, hadn't she been told every Sunday in memory. Now she didn't even have a Sunday service and her prayers were loaded with resignation.

For almost a year they had been under Stan's control. Too destitute to go home, they remained in semi-squalor. A place to sleep and regular meals meant survival. This, Stan provided but at what cost? Then, she thought herself expecting. It was another week before she had the courage to tell Pete. He was in one of his reminiscent moods that night. He talked about her family's Sunday table and socials at church. He missed the clean air and endless sky. He described the way the pheasant flushed when he went hunting with his Pa. She doubted Pete ever thought further ahead than a few days so she struck quickly with her news. Now she doubted her own ability to think ahead and here she stood with a mess of problems and barely equipped to handle them.

With a sigh she turned her thoughts to that night she lost her last tie to home. Since the money clip had been Stan's perhaps the original tickets had been purchased by Pete. He had meant to take her home. "Pete did love me", she realized. Somehow, Stan found out about his plan. She tried to feel bad about Stan's death but how could Pete help him in the end?

Had she cried enough? Had she chanted enough hymns under her breath and prayed during that ride? Hard economic times or not, Millie was going to have Pete's baby but how? She wasn't certain where she was headed, where she'd live let alone raise this child. "I want to be a good mama to you, baby," she thought as she patted her abdomen. "I'm going to be a good mama, if I can. Your daddy was a good man, and would have been a good daddy too," she mused. "You'll never know him."

Although the Shadow man spoke little she tried her best not to think of where he was taking her. She added a few prayers for him too. Oddly she felt safe with him, safe for the first time in years. She'd steal a glimpse of him and look away quickly. He was a fine figure of a man if that was what he was. Millie knew she was plain. With mousy brown hair, washed-out green eyes that were too close together and too wide around the hips, Millie knew she turned few heads. But, Pete loved her and she still loved him. All she had left of him and home was the little mote of life growing in her belly.

The train chugged on. Millie didn't know when during the night her savior had left her. Perhaps he was thirsty but she didn't think so. She was certain he wasn't returning though. Last night he had finally spoken more than curt words. He talked with sincerity about how family consisted of those you loved and that the sense of home grew from that. It was as if he were convincing her to keep and raise her child. He then sang hymns that lulled her to sleep.

She lifted her head to look the short distance to the seat he had occupied when she drifted off. In his stead was a folder. She reached across to pick it up suddenly noticing a gold band with a small diamond on her ring finger. Perusing the contents of the folder was a three year old marriage license, a sealed envelope with the address of a San Franciscan law firm, and a key. Her name was now Mrs. Millicent Patterson, widowed. Tied to the key was a card with the address of a house near Point Montara on the Pacific coast. A short note in the back of the folder had two sentences.

_You have saved me from "nothing" too. Live well._

Millie continued with her natural life, raising her daughter, remarrying to have four more children, and enjoying 12 grandchildren in her old age. She never saw the shadow man again.


End file.
